


Jade's Daemon

by crookedbones



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Homestuck
Genre: Art, Crossover, F/M, Fanart, Gen, Illustrated, daemon AU, daemonstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 20:37:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1360939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedbones/pseuds/crookedbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sorry, not a typo of demonstuck. A crossover between Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass/His Dark Materials series and Homestuck- an exploration of what it might have looked like had a part of Jade's soul been externally visible- no, rather a third extraneous self- or fourth..fifth.. um. The difference being, this ones a magic mood ring animal</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jade's Daemon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astralDeveloper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralDeveloper/gifts).



 His name is Neph, and he knows you exactly as well as you know yourself.

When you were little, all alone on the big island but for Grandpa and his Daphne, and of course Bec, you didn't know that all young daemons changed like yours did. It's a bit silly, thinking back, but you'd looked at Grandpa's ever constant kangaroo rat companion, and then at your evershifting Neph, and you'd thought you were _special_. He'd flicker from marmoset to lemur to lorikeet midair, showing you how fast, how magical he was. And you'd grab ahold of his fur or feathers and mock his bird calls and whisper in his ear that he was different from any daemon on earth, that someday you'd grow up to be even stronger and smarter and braver than Grandpa and you'd move mountains and islands and tectonic plates together, and then friends could come visit you and play and race. Neph would slither out of your hands as a silky cornsake and laugh little hissy snake giggles. You'd start up games of tag, but it was hard with just two. So Neph would sometimes bark and pull at Bequerel's tail until you were both playing a breathless game of bop the weasel, but a weasel that is radioactive and teleports, so you'd quickly grow tired and watch clouds instead. They were never as beautiful as the clouds in skaia. "But still fun," said Neph. And so the days passed, to the beat of cicadas and summer heat, gardening in the cool morning, lessons at midday, and all the adventuring you could fit in before Bec called you to supper. At night, after Becquerel tucked you in, he would curl up around your daemon snugly, to keep Neph from wandering while you dreamt.

 

After Grandpa was set up in the living room as a permanent installation, you spent a bit less time outdoors.

You read more. You read everything. At first you'd had some naive idea that you could bring him back, but you soon suffered the disappointing shock that Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus_ was as much a flight of fancy as your notion that an unformed daemon was unique to you. But the researching, the learning, the buzz of your mind as you set your whole head on a good trig problem and none of your heart on the amateur human taxidermy in the foyer- it helped. It became a way to honor him and forget him all at once, and Neph was always creative in ways he could help.

 

And then came pesterchum and Dave and John and Rose and your world grew to the exponential power of three. In skaia's clouds you and Neph once thought you caught a glimpse of a friends' daemon's settled form-! But he pushed your hands from your keyboard and put a clawed finger to his chimpanzee lips. Not yet. It was just another secret to keep, between just you and yourself. You began to collect secrets. Juggling timelines became your new study. You and Neph had finished your Grandpa's library in any case.

But then the game began for real, and it was like nothing you or Neph had prepared for.

And Jadesprite.

She was sobbing and clutching at her face, eyes wide and searching. "Neph! Neph!" she'd called, knotting her wispy ghost tail.

 "I'm here, I'm here," he chirped, but she could not see him, not for all the brightest plumage he could muster.

You knew every human had a daemon, in the same way that you knew they should have two eyes and ten toes. You had hoped, but never verified, that ghosts have daemons as well. On the day you shot your grandpa, Neph had watched the atoms of Daphne drift apart as your gaurdian lost whatever was holding her particles together. After the necromancy theory had been debunked, he'd demanded you find out what happens to daemons after death. Of course, while there were thousands of opinions, no one had anything definitive to say on the matter, and you both soon forgot it in favor of a curious quantum physics theorem.

But since you began sburb, neither Neph nor you had yet considered what use a sprite would have for a spirit guide.

"What have you done? Where is he? Oh Boo Hoo Hoo!"

You're angry by now. Where is her Neph? She looks so pitifully wrong and strange, with her ears and torso and glowing complexion, but most of all the bare naked absence of a daemon. Would you have to share? You feel like retching.

Neph looks desperately between you and her, or her and you. He cries mournful cassowary calls, deep in his bright blue throat, but Jadesprite cannot hear him. She cannot see him. She cannot touch him.

"What have you DONE?"

Jadesprite would never know the presence of her daemon again. 

She'd run off soon enough, and you and Neph silently resolved not to speak of it.

You played the game.

You talked to trolls, even, your childhood tormentors, against Neph's grumbled warnings. Karkat called him a built in "moirail". He said that trolls have to go out and find their own daemons. You ask him if he's got one, then, and are rewarded four inch long grey text block of transparent denial. You knew it made Neph think of Jadesprite, and you felt envy and pity churn in your belly and curdle like milk and lemon juice.

In the land of Frost and Frogs, he stands watch for Bec Noir while you examined amphibians. His forms have all been big and furry and white lately. You kiss his wet bear nose. You miss Bec, too.

 Existential moping is forgotten the moment Dave and Allena pass through your gate. Neph darts as a dragonfly and scampers as a red squirrel and chases frogs as a heron. You've only ever seen two other daemons before in your whole life, and John's Chera never did much in her sleep, so Neph says she didn't really count. Dave's counterpart always takes the most gangly, awkward forms: odd-nosed bats and ostritchs and naked molerats, changing into stranger and weirder shapes until Neph is a wheezing hyena, sick with laughter. It becomes a game, to see who can get the other to break a smile first. You almost always lose.

 Neph sees a daemon fall apart by your bullets for a second time, and he never forgives you.

 

 When you go godtier, Neph is a brilliant rust red stag. You string the planets between his velvet antlers. Everything is a matter of perspective, you tell him. He is so beautiful and strong, his slender hooves deftly cleaving the stars as you twirl space about you like pulling a tablecloth without moving the silverware. You are breathless in this perfect moment. Neph is proud and sleek and you think that maybe he has settled at last.

He hasn't. On the prospitian ship he is restless. You know that size and distance are only relative, yet the battleship and the lands and the houses are all too big and too empty, and you are cramped in this excess space. At least there is your brother, and Davesprite. Just those two is so much more than you've had your whole life, and sometimes you think you'll burst.

You think about Neph settling a lot, but he never wants to hear it. You've grown way past the age that most daemons stabilize at, and you get scared you never will, that you are special just like you thought when you were six.

John's Chera had been a lanky sand colored hare for so long you had assumed she had found her final form. Then on their birthday, they'd thrown such a fit, and suddenly the shape of a rabbit repulsed her. This made you feel a bit better, admittedly, but you still wondered about Rose's and Dave's daemons on the meteor. Sometimes you think the game is keeping it from you.

In the dream bubbles, you occasionally came across versions of yourself and Neph who had never settled, and some who'd settled as big white dogs, and one who'd settled as a black one. You left that bubble as quickly as possible, and hoped and hoped and hoped that there was nothing in that Jade that was in you.  

Once, you asked Davesprite if he wanted to hold Neph. Jadesprites memories were in you now, after all. You felt you knew what he had lost. This breach of the most instinctual taboo surprized him, and for a second you could see the twelve year old boy that he still is, and always will be. He declined your offer, until the day he broke up with you. He let the back of his hand brush up, so soft that Neph almost didn't feel it, so tender that all the anger just dropped out of you and you felt so heavy. You let him walk out without a word. For a while after that Neph couldn't hold a shape for more than an hour.

You can't say you weren't taken aback by the body that he took in the end. A wolf, or even a dog, you'd hoped for. A lion or that stag, perhaps a playful otter. But a harpy eagle, with powerful wings and cruel looking talons, first looked too harsh and feirce. But Neph looked at you with pride and his crown feathers rose about his head like one of those goofy Shakespearean collars, and you fell in love with his shape, and knew it to be yours.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for this prompt! I had so much fun with it, if only I'd been able to devote more time. I'm really taken with this crossover now...  
> The kid's daemons are as follows. I put some thought into it, but I'm never very good at that sort of personality analysis...  
> Rose- gypsy moth (moths are attracted to the light, also because rosemary *u*)  
> Roxy- cat (I wanted to avoid obvious choices but that girl is 100% feline no way around it)  
> John- swallow ("Chera" comes from Cheramoeca leucosternus, the latin name for the white-backed swallow)  
> Jane- mongoose (a rodent, but a rodent that BITES)  
> Dirk- cornsake (doesn't fit super well, but it LOOKS really cool, and also slytherin swag)  
> Dave-crow ("Allena" comes from Edgar Allen Poe, HA, sorry. sort of intentionally cliche..)  
> Jake- kangaroo rat (Daphne is also derived from a latin name)  
> Jade- harpy eagle (In His Dark Materials universe, witches have exclusively bird daemons. It's also a bad pun on "Harley"... Neph comes from the word nephite. The green stone known as Jade is auctually two different rocks, jadite and nephite, with similar appearances but slightly different in hardness)  
> In the Golden Compass it is really vaguely implied that people with same-sex daemons are gay, but I'm not such a big fan of that headcanon. The books don't explicitly state so, only mention the rare existence of same-sex daemons. I just don't know where that would leave nonbinary genders and sexualities, which makes me very uncomfortable. I chose to represent Jake's daemon as female because I because I think his character has many traits he would code as feminine, but if you wish, please imagine Dirk's or Rose's or Jade's or anyone's daemon as you please. If I had the time and ability I'd try to tackle issues with daemons and gender identity, because that would actually be a really interesting study!  
> Jeez, sorry for this long ass note, but thank you for reading this! UuU


End file.
